pixarmoviesfandomcom-20200214-history
UP
Up is a 2009 American computer-animated comedy-adventure film produced by Pixar Animation Studios about a cranky old man and an overeager Wilderness Explorer who fly to South America in a floating house suspended from helium balloons. It is distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, and premiered by opening the 2009 Cannes Film Festival as the first animated film ever to do so.3 The film was released on May 29, 2009 in North America and is scheduled for release on October 9, 2009 in the United Kingdom. Up is director Pete Docter's second feature-length film (after Monsters, Inc.), and features the voices of Edward Asner, Christopher Plummer, Bob Peterson, and Jordan Nagai. It is Pixar's tenth feature film and the studio's first to be presented in Disney Digital 3-D,4 and is accompanied in theaters by the short film Partly Cloudy.5 The film will also be shown in Dolby 3D in selected theaters.6 On IMDb, Up was rated #25 out of the IMDb Top 250 movies by 29,035 votes7 by July 31, 2009. Story In 1939, Carl Fredricksen is a shy 8-year-old boy who meets an outgoing and rather eccentric girl named Ellie and discovers they share the same interest in adventures as their hero, famed explorer Charles Muntz. Ellie expresses her desire to move her clubhouse to Paradise Falls in South America, a promise she makes Carl swear to keep. Years pass, and Carl and Ellie marry and grow old together in the old house where they first met while making a living as a toy balloon vendor and a zookeeper respectively. Unable to have children, they also try to save up for the trip to Paradise Falls but other financial obligations arise. Just as they finally seem to be able to take their trip, Ellie dies of old age, leaving Carl living by himself, becoming sour and missing his wife terribly. As the years pass, the city grows around Carl's house with construction as he refuses to move. After a tussle with a construction worker over his broken mailbox, the court orders Carl to move into Shady Oaks Retirement Home. Carl comes up with a scheme to keep his promise to Ellie, and uses his old professional supplies to create a makeshift airship using 10,000 helium balloons which lift his house off its foundations. Russell, a Wilderness Explorer trying to earn his final merit badge for "Assisting the Elderly", has stowed away on the porch after being sent on a snipe hunt by Carl the day before. After a storm throws them off course, Russell steers the house with the help of his GPS navigator, and they find themselves on the opposite side of the tepui from Paradise Falls. With their body weight providing ballast allowing Carl and Russell to pull the floating house, the two begin to walk across the tepui, hoping to reach the falls while there's still enough helium in the balloons to keep the house afloat. During the journey, Russell befriends a huge, colorful bird which he names Kevin, not realizing that the bird is actually female. They later run into a dog named Dug with a translating collar that lets him speak. They discover Dug's owner is 85-year-old Charles Muntz, who has remained in South America for many decades to find and bring back a giant bird (who turns out to be Kevin) in order to restore his reputation after bringing back a skeleton of the bird and being called a fraud because scientists thought he faked the evidence. Carl is initially thrilled to meet his hero, but when he realizes that Muntz is after Kevin and will kill remorselessly in order to capture her alive, Carl takes steps to save the bird and escape from Muntz. Thanks to Kevin and Dug they escape Muntz's pack of vicious dogs, led by a Doberman Pinscher named Alpha, but Kevin is injured during the escape. Led by a tracking device in Dug's collar, Muntz and his dogs arrive in his airship while Carl and Russell assist the injured Kevin to her chicks. Muntz sets Carl's house on fire, forcing Carl to choose saving his house over cutting Kevin loose from the net trapping her. Muntz and his dogs quickly capture the bird and fly off. Carl firmly tells Russell he intends to get to Paradise Falls or die trying, and begins walking back again. The next day, Carl successfully gets the house on the ground overlooking Paradise Falls per Ellie's wish, but Russell's desire to fulfill his own dream has been dulled out of anger and disappointment. Carl, settling down in his house, finds Ellie's childhood "adventure" scrapbook, which he thought had been left blank after the first few pages to save room for their planned adventure to Paradise Falls. However, he instead discovers that the pages have been filled with mementos of her life with Carl after they were married, and a final note from her thanking Carl for the adventure of their marriage, and an encouragement for him to go on an adventure of his own. Invigorated by Ellie's last wish, he goes outside to see Russell, only to find him giving chase to Muntz. Carl lightens the weight of his house by dumping furniture and his possessions, allowing him to chase after Muntz in his house with Dug by his side. Russell enters the airship through a window, but is captured by the dogs. He is tied up and left to fall to the earth, but Carl saves him and keeps him tied up in the house. Carl and Dug board the ship, and are able to lure the guard dogs away from Kevin to free her. Carl and Muntz duel face to face and fight (Muntz with a sword, Carl with his cane), while Dug is able to wrest control of the dogs and the dirigible from Alpha. Russell frees himself but clings to a lifeline as he finds the house in a dogfight with biplane fighters. When Carl shouts for help, Russell distracts the dog pilots and regains control of the house to rescue his friends, who are now on top of the airship. In pursuit, Muntz shoots out some of the balloons, causing the house to land and slide off the airship. Carl manages to trick Muntz inside the house while saving Russell, Dug, and Kevin. Muntz attempts to reach the airship again, but gets tangled in the house's balloons and plummets. Carl's house drifts off into the clouds — a loss Carl gracefully accepts as being for the best. Carl takes Muntz's Dirigible and returns Kevin to her chicks, and then returns Russell and Dug back to the city. When Russell's father fails to attend his son's Senior Explorer ceremony, Carl fulfills that role himself to proudly present Russell with his final badge, the grape soda badge that Ellie presented to Carl when they first met ("The Ellie Badge"). Afterward, Carl becomes a cheerfully active community volunteer with a strong father-like relationship with Russell, Dug, and the other Wilderness Explorers. His house, through happenstance, did ultimately land exactly where he and Ellie envisioned it — overlooking Paradise Falls Cast *Edward Asner as Carl Fredricksen. Docter and Rivera noted Asner's television alter-ego Lou Grant had been helpful in writing for Carl, because it guided them in balancing likeable and unlikeable aspects of the curmudgeonly character.8 When they met Asner and presented him with a model of his character, he joked "I don't look anything like that." They would tailor his dialogue for him, with short sentences and more consonants, which "cemented the notion that Carl, post-Ellie, is a disgruntled bear that's been poked awake during hibernation".9 *Jordan Nagai as Russell, a Wilderness Explorer stowaway on Carl's flying house.10 He accompanies Carl in order to earn his "assisting the elderly" badge: the only one he doesn't have. Though he has never really been to the wilderness, he is depressed that his father is always too busy to spend time with him; on their journey, Russell makes a comment to Carl that suggests that Russell's father and mother are no longer together.11 Russell's design was based on Pixar animator Peter Sohn.12 Docter auditioned 400 boys in a nationwide casting call for the part.13 Nagai, who is Japanese American14 showed up to an audition with his brother, who was actually the one auditioning. Docter realized Nagai behaved and spoke non-stop like Russell and chose him for the part.15 Nagai was seven years old when cast.13 Docter encouraged Nagai to act physically as well as vocally when recording the role, lifting him upside down and tickling him for the scene where Russell encounters Kevin.9 Asian Americans have positively noted Pixar's first casting of an Asian lead character,16 in contrast to the common practice of casting non-Asians in Asian parts.17 *Bob Peterson as Dug, a talking golden retriever18 with a collar that translates his thoughts into comical-sounding English, and is the odd duck out of a pack of dogs with similar collars owned by Muntz. All dogs of the pack have a strange obsession with squirrels. Peterson knew he would voice Dug when he wrote his line "I have just met you, and I love you," which was based on what a child told him when he was a camp counselor in the 1980s. In the closing credits of the film Dug is shown to have had puppies with an unnamed female dog that strongly resembles him. Also in the film Ratatouille, Dug's shadow is seen on a wall barking at Remmi. 18 *Peterson also voices Alpha, a talking Doberman Pinscher18 and the leader of Muntz's pack of dogs. Pete Docter has stated that Alpha "thinks of himself as Clint Eastwood", but despite his menacing appearance, a malfunction in his collar occasionally causes his voice to sound comically high-pitched and squeaky, as if he had been breathing helium. The normal voice for his translator chip is a resonant, intimidating bass; Russell notes that he likes the faulty voice better. With both voices, Alpha has a roundabout speech pattern that causes his sentences to be longer than necessary. It should be noted that Alpha is the character's rank in the pack, rather than his name. *Kevin, a large, flightless tropical bird. Russell impulsively gives the bird a male name, only later learning that Kevin is female. Near the end of the film, it is shown that Kevin has three baby tropical birds.19 The bird's iridescent appearance is based upon the male Himalayan Monal Pheasant. 20 *Christopher Plummer as Charles F. Muntz, the antagonist. He was an adventurer Carl and his wife admired when they were children.21 He departed for South America after scientists claimed he had faked his discovery of the skeleton of a 13-foot tall bird (Kevin's species), vowing to find a living specimen. Unfortunately, the countless years he spent there has made him greedy and paranoid, believing anyone who came to Paradise Falls was after the bird to steal his glory. He is an avid dog lover and inventor, being able to train them to do practically anything, and has invented devices that translate their thought into speech.18 Pete Docter compared Muntz to Charles Lindbergh and Howard Hughes.10 See also List of UP characters